Today at TILE we talked about graduating from college and entering “the real world” with student loans on your balance sheet. As thousands of college grads begin making their first (of many) loan payments, that feeling of “free money” will quickly disappear. But how many people actually have those student loans? Are student loans better or worse than other kinds of debt? And how will today’s job market impact a person’s ability to pay down those debts?

Student finance is a big market. In the 2008-2009 academic year alone, students took out nearly $100 billion in education-related debt. And according to the College Board’s 2009 Trends in Student Aid report, only 34% of 2007-08 Bachelor’s degree recipients graduated with no education debt. This means that 2 out of 3 people in college have some from of debt (and you’re in the minority if you don’t have any debt at all). As the cost of education increases, so too will both the number of people that need help paying for college and the amount they’ll need to borrow. To put it in perspective, the average student loan debt after graduating from college increased from about $21,000 in 2004 to almost $28,000 just four years later in 2008.

Fortunately (and unfortunately), student loans differ some from other kinds of loans. On the one hand, they are usually easier to obtain. The government, via Sallie Mae, makes it relatively easy to obtain loans for higher education (Sallie currently manages over $180 billion in loans). In fact, the company exists to extend loans to people who want to go to school – it’s a way for the government to invest in the country’s future. On the other hand, government loans are more onerous. For example, if you don’t repay your student loans, that fact will stay on your credit history forever – making it much harder to obtain a loan in the future. But an individual who has a lot of debt from other types of loans and can’t pay it off can declare bankruptcy, which will disappear from their credit report after about seven years. It seems kind of unfair that people who borrow money for less noble causes than higher education get a “do over” but college grads do not (maybe they’re supposed know better than to default on their loans).

The combination of more student debt and tougher rules takes on additional meaning in today’s job market. While college grads under 25 enjoy a lower rate of unemployment than young adults without a college degree (8% versus 24.5% in April of 2010), they aren’t unaffected. For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that 8% figure is really high compared to the rate of 6.8% a year ago and just 3.7% in April of 2007. If debt is going up while the number of available jobs (and the salaries for those jobs) is decreasing, it doesn’t bode well for future credit ratings of this generation.

Start watching the paper for stories on student loans – particularly private universities that have been benefiting from the easy access their students have to credit. Some investors are already asking if easy access to college loans compares to the easy access for mortgages that damaged the entire U.S. economy in 2009. A major difference is that if you default on a mortgage, the bank can take back your house – but they can’t really take back your education. If banks can’t make money on student loans, it could lead to fewer funds being available, more people attending public universities, and the opportunity for creative thinking to fund a college education (People Capital, for instance).

So what does this mean for the TILE Community? Well, if you’re not personally affected by the student loan crunch, you can bet your friends will be. They may not be able to keep up with the lifestyle you’ve shared in the past, and that will certainly alter the range of activities available to all of you. (This isn’t a bad thing, by the way – the best things in life truly are free.) But as a member of this generation, it’s important for you to stay ahead of big economic developments like this one, so you can safeguard your assets against another big, bad credit bubble.